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IEEE Bibliography & Reference List: Complete Formatting Guide

Rules, numbered examples, and everything you need to build a correct IEEE reference list — from journals to websites to technical reports.

⏱ 9 min read 📋 IEEE Style 🔢 Numeric citation system

IEEE "References" vs "Bibliography" — What's the Difference?

In everyday language, "bibliography" and "reference list" are used interchangeably. In IEEE style, however, the correct term is References — not "Bibliography," "Works Cited," or "Sources." Using the wrong heading is a common formatting mistake that reviewers and professors notice immediately.

The distinction matters beyond just the label. A bibliography in traditional academic styles (Chicago, for example) can include background reading that was consulted but not directly cited. An IEEE References section is strictly a list of every source that was cited in the text using a bracketed number — and only those sources. If you did not cite it with a [number], it does not belong in the list.

The other major difference is ordering. APA, MLA, and Harvard reference lists are alphabetical by author surname. IEEE's reference list is ordered by first appearance in the text — the source assigned [1] is the first source you cited, [2] is the second, and so on. This citation-order (also called sequential-number) system is characteristic of IEEE and several other engineering and technical styles (Vancouver, for example, uses the same approach).

Key takeaways for the heading and scope:

Reference List Formatting Rules

IEEE reference lists follow a consistent set of physical formatting rules regardless of source type. These rules are designed for technical journals and conference papers, so they prioritize clarity and brevity over the elaborate punctuation seen in humanities styles.

Numbering and layout

The "References" heading

Author names

Titles

Punctuation

Sample Mixed Reference List

Below is a complete, correctly formatted IEEE reference list containing five common source types. Notice the citation-order sequence, the consistent bracket format, and the absence of blank lines between entries.

References

[1] L. A. Zadeh, "Fuzzy sets," Information and Control, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 338–353, Jun. 1965, doi: 10.1016/S0019-9958(65)90241-X.
[2] S. M. Ross, Introduction to Probability Models, 12th ed. Academic Press, 2019.
[3] M. Chen, X. Liu, and R. Zhang, "Deep learning for real-time traffic prediction," in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), Auckland, New Zealand, 2019, pp. 1024–1031.
[4] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "SHA-3 standard: Permutation-based hash and extendable-output functions," NIST, Gaithersburg, MD, FIPS PUB 202, Aug. 2015. [Online]. Available: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/NIST.FIPS.202.pdf. [Accessed: Apr. 10, 2025].
[5] IEEE, "IEEE standard for floating-point arithmetic," IEEE Std 754-2019 (Revision of IEEE 754-2008), Jul. 2019, doi: 10.1109/IEEESTD.2019.8766229.
Note: The entries above appear in the order they were first cited in the paper — not alphabetically. [1] was cited first in the text, [5] was cited last. If you cited the NIST report before the conference paper, their numbers would swap.

Journal Article Reference Format

Journal articles are the most common source type in IEEE papers. The full formula is:

[#] A. Author, "Article title in sentence case," Journal Name Abbreviated, vol. X, no. Y, pp. start–end, Mon. YYYY, doi: 10.XXXX/XXXXXX.

Key points: the month is abbreviated to three letters (Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May, Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep., Oct., Nov., Dec.). Page ranges use an en dash (–), not a hyphen (-).

Single author

[6] G. E. Moore, "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits," Electronics, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 114–117, Apr. 1965.

Three authors with DOI

[7] A. Vaswani, N. Shazeer, and N. Parmar, "Attention is all you need," Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 30, pp. 5998–6008, 2017, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762.

When a journal article has no DOI, substitute with a stable URL: [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed: date].

Book Reference Format

The standard IEEE book formula is:

[#] A. Author, Book Title in Title Case, Nth ed. City: Publisher, YYYY.

Note that the city of publication is included for books (unlike journal articles). For well-known publishers or cases where the city is obvious from the publisher name, many recent IEEE papers omit it — follow your submission guidelines.

Book with edition and city

[8] D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, 3rd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

First edition (edition not stated)

[9] C. M. Bishop, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. New York, NY: Springer, 2006.

For edited books (collections), add "Ed." or "Eds." after the editor's name(s) in parentheses: R. Smith, Ed., Title…

Conference Paper Reference Format

Conference papers use the abbreviation Proc. (Proceedings) and the preposition in before the conference name. The full formula is:

[#] A. Author, "Paper title," in Proc. Conference Name (ABBREV.), City, Country, YYYY, pp. start–end.

If the paper was merely presented (not published in proceedings), use "presented at" instead of "in Proc." The conference name is italicized; the abbreviation in parentheses is not.

[10] Y. LeCun, L. Bottou, Y. Bengio, and P. Haffner, "Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition," in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 1998, pp. 2278–2324.
[11] K. He, X. Zhang, S. Ren, and J. Sun, "Deep residual learning for image recognition," in Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2016, pp. 770–778, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2016.90.

Website & Online Source Format

For online sources that are not journal articles or reports, IEEE uses the [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed: date]. notation. The access date is required because web content can change or be removed.

The formula is:

[#] A. Author (if known), "Page title," Website or Organization Name, date of publication or last update. [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed: Day Mon. YYYY].

[12] World Health Organization, "Global tuberculosis report 2023," WHO, Geneva, Switzerland, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240083851. [Accessed: Mar. 15, 2025].
[13] M. Nielsen, "Neural networks and deep learning," Determination Press, 2015. [Online]. Available: http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com. [Accessed: Jan. 22, 2025].

If no author is identified, begin the entry with the title of the page. If no publication date is available, omit it — do not write "n.d." as some other styles require.

Handling Repeated Citations

One of the most misunderstood rules in IEEE is what happens when you cite the same source more than once. The answer is simple but important: the number never changes.

If source [3] is first cited in the Introduction and cited again in the Discussion, both in-text citations read [3]. The reference list still contains only one entry for that source, at position 3. You do not create a new entry, you do not add a letter suffix (like [3a] or [3b]), and you do not renumber.

This is fundamentally different from footnote-based systems (Chicago, Oxford) where a second citation of the same source produces "ibid." or a short-form footnote. In IEEE, the bracket number is both the first and every subsequent citation of that work.

Example: If your paper cites [1] in the abstract, then cites the same source again in Section III and in the Conclusion, all three in-text references read [1]. The reference list entry [1] appears once. The total number of entries in your reference list equals the number of distinct sources cited — not the total number of citations.

A related point: numbers are assigned in the order of first citation, and that order is locked. If you later add a sentence to the Introduction that cites what was previously [3], and that new citation comes before what was previously [1], you must renumber the entire list. This is exactly why citation generators and reference management tools are valuable for IEEE papers with many sources.

Missing Information

Real-world sources are not always complete. The table below covers the most common cases and shows the correct IEEE handling for each.

Missing element What to write Notes
No author Begin entry with the title Do not write "Anon." or "Unknown"
No date / undated Omit the year Do not write "n.d." — simply leave it out
No publisher Omit publisher field Include all other fields as normal
No page numbers (online) Omit pp. field; add [Online]. Available: URL Use DOI if available instead of URL
No volume/issue number Omit vol./no. fields Include year and pages if known
No DOI (journal article) Use [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed: date] Only if article is freely accessible; otherwise omit
No city of publication (book) Omit city; include publisher and year Acceptable for recent IEEE submissions

The underlying principle is to include as much information as the source actually provides, formatted in the correct order, and simply omit fields that genuinely do not exist. Do not invent placeholders.

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